


coffee and the Roerich

by espressohno



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles Always Says the Absolute Worst Thing He Could Possibly Say, Crack, Erik is a Sweetheart, Humor, M/M, a lot of bitching happens, prompt fill because apparently i do those
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7208279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's exam season and charles is having a really bad time and he's forced to wait out a gas leak in the dorm instead of sleeping (note: charles hasn't slept in two days). and then his sworn enemy and least favorite person on earth comes and sits down next to him and asks him on a date.<br/>vaguely based off of <a href="http://kageillusionz.tumblr.com/post/101059395877/theres-a-sudden-fire-alarm-in-the-apartment">this post</a> by kageillusionz</p>
<p>alternate title: charles is a bitch and erik is trying his best</p>
            </blockquote>





	coffee and the Roerich

**Author's Note:**

> confession: i know nothing about columbia and the roerich was the first museum to pop up on google but yall arent reading this for my accuracy anyway

Charles was at the end of what felt like the longest day of his life, or rather, the longest two days, if the ratio of asleep and awake was what qualified something as a _day_. 

It was moments like these, trudging back from the library at nearly two in the morning while mentally calculating how much sleep he would be able to get between showering, eating, checking his email, and his next exam at 8 AM. He shivered in the cold, pulling his jacket tighter around his body. Normally he was resilient towards this sort of weather but some combination of sleep deprivation and mental fatigue and the light snow starting to fall made him feel almost sick. 

He dragged his feet through the hallway, and his headache was already starting to lessen as he got closer and closer to his room. He fumbled around for his key, feeling the phantom sensations of his very near future of slamming his face into his pillow and falling asleep. 

And then he heard the ringing. It was distant at first, because his mind initially filtered it underneath the rest of his thoughts, but then he noticed the lights flashing, heard the open doors and heavy footsteps of his classmates leaving their dorm rooms. 

_ That’s the fire alarm. There’s a fire.  _

The threat of fire wasn’t even the worst part, though. The worst part was that Charles, who had  _ just _ made it back to his room, who was literally  _ seconds _ away from sleeping for the first time in two days, now had to go back downstairs and back outside. He groaned and hit his head lightly against the door as more people nervously filed through the hallway. 

_ Oh, fuck me _ . 

So he followed the mass exodus, about half of which were panicking and half too tired to care, down the stairs and back into the cold quad. Snow still fell, leisurely, spinning in little spirals in the air and disappearing after a few seconds on the ground. Charles stood in the crowd and scrubbed his face with his hands. He wondered if he would really be in  _ that much danger _ if he just went back inside and got in bed. 

Pajama-clad underclassmen huddled in groups, although some of them broke off to see if the RAs knew what was going on (spoiler alert: they didn’t). Charles just hugged himself tightly and stared up at the sky, watched as the occasional snowflake would manage to land on his face, and hated his life more than he logically should. As everyone started to wake up it got louder and louder, until Charles couldn’t handle the additional headache he was getting from all of the noise and left to find the nearest bench. He figured he could at least be sitting down while he suffered. 

The cold metal of the bench went straight through the fabric of his pants when he sat down and Charles thought  _ Well, great, this can’t get any worse _ . 

And then Erik showed up. 

 

On the basis of caring for his sanity and legal record, Charles avoided Erik Lehnsherr, International Affairs major and generally infuriating individual, at virtually all costs. 

They met during their freshman year, and for months Charles was sure that Erik didn’t even speak English, until he had to deliver a presentation in Philosophy on the importance of promoting public virtue and Erik literally  _ stood up _ halfway through his speech and spent north of  _ twenty minutes _ telling Charles why his entire argument was not only  _ logically wrong _ but they were also  _ only supported by sweeping generalizations and bleeding-heart idealism _ in perfect, German-accented English. The fact that Charles could remember that conversation word for word was a pretty good indicator of how much he hated Erik Lehnsherr after that day. 

To top it all off, not only was Erik walking up to him after they hadn’t spoken in two years, the man was also half naked, wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants that allowed Charles to form a frighteningly accurate hypothesis on how he would look if he was fully naked. 

Charles suppressed the urge to audibly groan once it was clear that Erik was definitely heading in his direction, holding his hand up in greeting. 

“Hi Charles.” He said, as if it hadn’t been two years since Charles cornered him outside of the lecture hall to ask him what his  _ bloody damage is _ and the two of them screamed at each other for a good hour. 

“Evening.” Charles replied, trying his best to make clear with his eyes that if Erik sat down on the bench next to him he would be dead in a manner of seconds. 

Erik sat down next to him. 

“How are your exams going?” 

Charles raised an eyebrow at him. First of all, Erik Lehnsherr wasn’t quite stupid enough to ask that kind of question when the answer was plainly obvious to anyone with eyes, and second of all, he had never once attempted to start a conversation before, much less in the middle of the night outside in the fucking cold. 

“Not to be rude but why in the bloody hell are you talking to me.” Charles’ head throbbed from the effort it took to speak clearly, especially considering that most of his face was fully numb by now. 

“That bad?” Erik asked nonchalantly. He spread out, relaxed on the bench as if it wasn’t below freezing and he wasn’t almost naked. The man didn’t even have shoes on, for christ’s sake.

It, of course, didn’t help that Erik was actually extremely good looking. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps reincarnation did exist because there was no other explanation for Erik having the body of a Greek god unless he was in Athens himself to pose for the sculptors. Charles reminded himself not to stare at the man’s golden bloody skin that stood out against the grey of winter, the muscular definition that no college student on Earth would realistically have. God, Charles hated him so much. 

He pointedly looked anywhere but Erik, taking the opportunity to analyze the fine architecture of Columbia under this shitty lighting. 

“You’re not still upset about that time we fought in Philosophy class, are you Charles?”

Erik was almost laughing at him, Charles could hear it in his voice. He glanced back at him without moving his head, which was the closest he could manage to glaring in his current state. Then Erik actually laughed. 

“That was not a fight. That was you interrupting my presentation for no reason other than to flex your debate skills and boost your own ego.”

“Oh please.” He scoffed. He didn’t seem bothered in the least by Charles’ hostility. Charles dropped his face into his hands, fighting off the splitting headache that he could feel coming back for round two. 

“If we take into consideration the part where you screamed at me in the hallway afterwards I think we can call it a fight.”

Charles didn’t even want to try and come up with a response, let alone lift his head to deliver it. 

“What’s your major again?”

“Genetics.” Charles mumbled, unsure why he was still talking to this asshole, “And a minor in sociology.”

“Makes sense.” Erik said, and then he answered the question that Charles very pointedly did not ask and already knew the answer to, “International Affairs.” 

Charles grunted noncommittally. 

“The building isn’t really on fire, you know.” Erik said after a few minutes. 

“Great.” 

“It’s a gas leak. Second floor.”

“I don’t think I want to know how you know this.” Charles rubbed his eyes. He opened them again, stared down at his shoes and let his shitty reality shift back into focus. 

“Do you want to go on a date with me?” Erik asked. Charles whipped his head up. 

“What the fuck.” 

Erik raised an eyebrow at him. 

“I’m being serious.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Well I didn’t mean  _ this minute. _ ”

At this point Charles realized that a) they probably weren’t going to be allowed back into the dorms for quite some time, and b)  _ Erik _ was not going to allow Charles to ignore him while they waited. Also, he had just asked Charles on a date for some ungodly reason. 

There was no longer any sense in his initial tactic of just pretending Erik wasn’t there. Charles did his best to mentally prepare himself and went ahead and fucking humored him. 

“Alright.” He leaned back onto the bench, after a failed attempt at actually sitting up, “Let’s say I agree to this date. What would we even do.”

Erik’s eyes lit up (he almost smiled). 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“Maybe coffee.” 

“Creative.” Charles deadpanned, and even though he was currently the worst version of himself, and he was definitely taking it all out on Erik, Erik didn’t seem the least bit put off. 

“Coffee and,” the weirdest part was that Erik looked like he was genuinely thinking about this. He had genuinely asked Charles out on a date. “There’s a new exhibit at the Roerich.”

“Coffee and the Roerich. Sounds more like you’re planning an afternoon with your grandmother.”

“Are you always this pleasant to be around?”  
“Only when I haven’t slept.” Charles bared his teeth at him, in lieu of actually smiling, since he probably wasn’t capable of that, anyway. 

“You’re lucky you’re pretty.” Erik said offhand, “Or I’d have retracted my offer by now.” 

There was no way in hell Charles’ main selling point that night had been his looks, considering the mess he probably was from stress and sleep deprivation, and especially considering the way he grimaced at the mere suggestion. And then Erik laughed, again. He laughed at him  _ again _ . 

“Well, not right now, I guess. But most days, I find you really attractive.” 

“Oh, god.” Charles couldn’t believe this was happening. He couldn’t believe the words coming out of Erik’s mouth. But Erik seemed to just keep talking. 

“And for a lot of very logical reasons I’ve been terrified to approach you ever since freshman year.” 

“Why is this happening.” He muttered under his breath. 

“I mean, if this is how you act when you’re hardly awake, imagine if I had come up to you on a good day.”

Charles took a deep breath, intentionally breathing loud enough to keep Erik from saying anything else. He blinked slowly and looked right into Erik’s eyes, because, fuck it, he had nothing to lose. This had already passed  _ worse case scenario  _ territory and Erik was shirtless and he was saying things that were almost compliments and Charles was really being a jackass, already. 

“Tell you what.” He said, “I’ll go on your bloody coffee date, three days from now after my last exam, if you’ll do something for me.”

Erik raised an eyebrow at him. 

“And what’s that?”

“I have an exam at 8 and I’m not wasting a single fucking second of sleep once the dorm is opened again.” It was taking a lot of energy for Charles to say so many words in a row. He continued. “And you're terrifying. So I need you to scare enough underclassmen so that I can be the first one that gets into that building.”

Erik smiled slowly, almost wickedly. 

“Deal.”

 

-

 

Three days later, Charles was fully intent on sleeping through his entire first day of the holiday break. He’d gone straight from his last exam, about 5:00 the night before, and into bed, not even stopping to eat or shower and hardly even taking the time to remove his shoes. He owed his body enough sleep debt that he could probably have gone a full 24 hours without waking again. 

Unless some asshole decided it was a good time to beat down his door. As if he wasn’t sleeping. As if the whiteboard on his door didn’t say  _ Fuck off _ . As if everyone else on the floor didn’t have the same bloody idea as Charles. 

He groaned, loudly, loud enough for the person on the other side of the door to hear, and got out of bed. He didn’t put pants on, or a shirt. He cracked the door open, wearing boxers and glaring daggers and ready to beat someone up, whoever it was, he wouldn’t hesitate, if it meant going back to bed. 

“Hi Charles.” 

It was Erik Lehnsherr. 

Charles held the door open only a few inches but he could see that Erik looked fully dressed and fully awake and ready for  _ coffee and the Roerich _ . 

“Oh, bloody hell.”

 

_ end. _


End file.
